October 8, 2013

Meanwhile, Alexander Aan, the persecuted and imprisoned atheist of Indonesia, is among those the Guardian offers up as a possible Nobel Peace Prize winner (and you can vote for him in their poll).

Prepare to have your mind blown by the utter sincerity with which Justice Antonin Scalia believes in the Devil. This interview with New York Magazine is a freaking doozy:

I mean, c’mon, that’s the explanation for why there’s not demonic possession all over the place. That always puzzled me. What happened to the Devil, you know? He used to be all over the place. He used to be all over the New Testament. . . . He got wilier . . . You’re looking at me as though I’m weird.

Speaking of crazy, here's Michele Bachmann, um, Bachmanning about how Obama is helping terrorists (obviously) and blah blah end of the world:

I’m a believer in Jesus Christ, as I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God’s end times history.

Seems like the Legion of Doom wanted the GOP to shut the government down over contraceptive coverage. (Think Progressreports this as more absolute, and I think from the letter itself it's more implied than demanded.)

Our Living without Religion billboard has inspired a very odd online poll from WOOD Radio in Michigan, which asks, "Is the ‘You Don’t Need God’ billboard a slam on Christians or just acknowledging non-believers?" Really? A slam?

Behavioral scientists Jane L. Risen and A. David Nussbaum write how superstitions like knocking on wood, alas, sometimes do help, but not because of magic.

BBC reports on a breakthrough at the National Ignition Facility (no I never heard of that either):

[D]uring an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel - the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world.

Almost as soon as I could fathom nature's physical laws, I abandoned any belief in the supernatural. But there is a funny thing about being a Jew. You can reject the religious component entirely and still be one.

Following the banning of "religiously offensive" shirts at the London School of Economics, John Sargent writes:

[L]et us have interfaith dialogue but also include humanists and atheists - not only to work together as a community but to take each other out of our comfort zone. Inclusivity does not mean giving each other a free ride to how we feel and preventing dialogue altogether. Things need to be said and freely expressed - even if on a t-shirt.

On the evidence, supplementing your diet with any of these 5 vitamins carries little or no benefit, and may cause you harm. This is why we do science, people. Our intuitions aren’t always right: just because a little bit of something is good for you does not mean that a lot of it is even better.

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Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by Paul or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.

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Paul Fidalgo has been communications director of the Center for Inquiry since 2012. He holds a master’s degree in political management from George Washington University, and has worked previously for FairVote: The Center for Voting and Democracy and the Secular Coalition for America. Paul is also an actor and musician whose work includes five years performing with the American Shakespeare Center. He lives in Maine with his wife and kids. His blog at the Patheos network is iMortal, and he tweets at @paulfidalgo.